#they have been so gay and homophobic throughout eight whole seasons

[gustingirl]

i’m actually surprised supernatural and destiel are THE ship of this site when house md and hilson are right there

[kiintsugi]

Batwoman should have used the Bad Blood story line: Fight me

Arrowverse has always been a strange entity for me. On the one hand, it gives screen time and recognition to (at times) underrepresented comics and comic characters under the DC banner, especially to groups of people who might otherwise never pick up an interest in comics. On the other hand, Arrowverse really loves two things: queerbaiting and ignoring comic-canon. 

So with 5 intertwined shows currently airing on the CW, it was no surprise to me to know that their most recent lore expansion comes in the shape of Gotham’s Batwoman.

There is a lot that The Batwoman show is restricted by; not only in the sense that DC has declared Bruce Wayne/Batman as “off-limits” to the CW, but because of how the entirety of the CW universe has unfolded over the past – what – eight or so years? 

Now, this isn’t a ‘Felicity Smoak doesn’t exist’ type of rant. It’s a show, on a low budget network whose target audience is women ages 18 to 34. I get that there will be changes, new characters, and storylines will be manipulated however the team feels best to tell the story they’re trying to tell. This is me yelling about the changes they made that they really didn’t need to make at all in order to tell an origin story they don’t need to tell because they already had the perfect storyline for the “no batman allowed” problem.

But before I get into that. We need to talk about the core differences established between the two universes as I believe that without understanding Comic Kate, this argument i’ve decided to make has little ground to stand on.

(source:https://www.dcuniverse.com/encyclopedia/batwoman/)

In the Silver Age, Batwoman (known as Kathy Kane) was introduced as a sort of hybrid between Batman and the first Robin. She was wealthy, she was acrobatic, and most importantly, she proved that Bruce Wayne was not gay.

She has since made appearances in four essential storylines and timeline reboots as Kate Kane starting in 2006.

Her introduction as Kate Kane came at a time in which DC was rebooting series with the intention to diversify their character roster, and it is here we see the “I’m just here to make homophobes feel better" crime fighter come into her own,  badass, identity

The basis of her background goes like this: Kate and her twin sister are born into a military family of which her father is the brother of Martha Wayne, Bruce’s mother. One year, on her birthday, Kate, her sister, and her mother are taken captive by enemy agents and despite her father’s best efforts, only Kate was saved.

Later, in an attempt to please her father, Kate enrolls at West Point where she fell in love with her roommate, Sophie. When caught, Kate protects Sophie and avoids outing her, earning herself a dishonorable discharge. Despite this, her father is nothing but supportive and Kate’s life (now boosted thanks to her father’s marriage to Catherine Hamilton) becomes that of a hard-partying socialite. She is eventually apprehended by Renee Montoya, a GCPD officer. They begin a relationship, but it eventually ends with Renee dumping Kate after she learns that Kate, still with no direction or life goals, has dropped out of school.

It isn’t until she is rescued by Batman from a mugger that she finds her purpose. She operated for a year at this point by using stolen military equipment before her father discovered what she had been doing. It takes some convincing but her father, still, the most supportive and loving father any superhero has ever had, arranges for her to train with some of his contacts to hone her skills. When she returns, he presents her not only with the Batwoman suit, but with a headquarters of her own, where he offers tactical support to his daughter in the field.

For Arrowverse, this has changed quite a bit.

Kate lost her sister and mother in a car crash gone wrong in which Batman failed to rescue them. This failure to rescue his only living family is noted by Luke Fox later in the episode as something that haunts Bruce to this day. 

We haven’t seen a whole lot into Kate’s time at West Point, but we know the CW plans to expand on this. So far, the main thing worth noting is when the academy finds out about their relationship, Kate defies the orders of her superior officers and quits the academy while Sophie agrees to the terms and the two break up.

It is also hinted several times that Kate’s father isn’t nearly as supportive of Kate as he is in the comic. It is pretty clear that they want her best family relationship at this point to be to with Bruce, not her dad, but that’s beside the point. The strain on her relationship with her father is marked by him sending her away to train with survival specialists with a promise (later revealed to be a lie) to enlist her in his private security, CROWS, upon her return.

Her foray into crime-fighting comes only when Sophie is reported to have been taken hostage and Kate, determined to help, stumbles into the Batcave and arms herself with her cousin’s gear that he has for some reason left behind.

Obviously, these storylines are very different from one another. 

Where Kate in the comics had to earn her place in the Batfamily, Kate in Arrowverse finds herself operating as the only member of the family in a Gotham on the brink of collapse without Batman. This is supposed to be because The CW can’t use Batman and their desire to tell something along the lines of an Origin story for Batwoman. 

But, the thing is, we had Batman: Bad Blood (based off the Leviathan arc)  where, you guessed it, Batman isn’t around and the remaining members of the Batman Family are left to pick up the pieces.

It doesn’t make sense to me that they would have introduced Kate already operating as a vigilante last season only to backtrack track to a newbie a year later where they then proceed to tear apart her origins for the sake of their own story. One that, quite frankly, doesn’t hold up as well by comparison.

Bad Blood is different from the comics too, but it has a solid backbone that could have made a perfect skeleton for the Arrowverse storyline

Kate is already established as a crime fighter. Bruce knows who she is, is keeping tabs on her and doesn't want her getting involved in anything that can get her hurt. Kate doesn't care and does whatever she wants. They don't get along. But Bruce still saves Batwoman and is hit with an explosion that seemingly takes his life. There is so much story potential for a TV series here that could span one really good season and be sprinkled in throughout several more revolving around her blaming herself for his disappearance/death.

There is more pressure on Kate from the beginning to succeed. At first, Batwoman will be placed up a pedestal for filling the gap created by Batman's disappearance. Tieing in her guilt for her hand in this takes that away, giving her the underdog effect often found in origin stories and encourages us to root for her.

It’s a better explanation for why Bruce isn’t around. There’s no logical reason as to why Bruce would up and disappear or why Batman would apparently abandon Gotham. At least one that doesn't involve people believing he’s dead.

We don’t have any of this ‘unsupportive’ father garbage. We get a good supportive father/daughter relationship. We could have happy family holidays of Kate and her dad celebrating Jewish traditions together, we have great representation of a military man fully embracing his daughter despite being dishonorably discharged because of DADT, also lots of potential scenes of him being worried/helping her out in the field instead of doing his own thing with the CROWS.

Also why CROWS and not MCU? MCU means Maggie and anyone who read the comics back in 2013 and remembers the bullshit DiDio pulled would appreciate Kate being that much closer to meeting Maggie Sawyer (who was very well received by the arrowverse fandom) and idk...maybe not doing Kate dirty this time around.

And i mean, if not, Renee is badass and we like her too, and she’s actually in the Bad Blood storyline.

The entire concept of making Kate the ‘female Bruce Wayne’ is dumb. Especially since she’s spent her entire vigilante career forging her own path and doing her own thing bc batman is a narcissist and a control freak and she has no intention of mindlessly following his orders.

Bad Blood introduces Luke Fox as Batwing so there’s a whole storyline to follow there since he’s in the pilot episode and we know they have the ability to use him.

It allows for Talia to cross over from Arrow to Batwoman and introduce Damien if they feel like it.

It doesn’t interfere with Arrowverse Canon. They can very easily tell a story about how Batwoman goes from a relatively new vigilante under Batman’s shadow to a fully realized crime fighter without contradicting any of the arrowverse continuity. 

I get that they’re limited and that’s totally fine. You can’t expect things to be perfect. But CW is really missing an opportunity for good storytelling all for the sake of “she’s the female Bruce Wayne” concept and its extremely disrespectful to the character to equate her to nothing more than being a female version of another character when she has already established herself as her own person and her own hero.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.